


An Awkward Reunion (The Milah!verse)

by lizandletdie, Tinuviel_Undomiel



Series: The Milah!verse [1]
Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: AU, I Don't Even Know You Guys, Post-Curse Storybrooke, Season 3 AU, Storybrooke, Time Travel, this is just weird
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-06-21
Updated: 2015-04-19
Packaged: 2018-02-05 13:57:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 10
Words: 20,510
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1820806
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lizandletdie/pseuds/lizandletdie, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tinuviel_Undomiel/pseuds/Tinuviel_Undomiel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Neal and Emma (rather than Emma and Killian) fall through Zelena's portal and travel back in time where Neal saves a mysterious woman his father was trying to kill.  The woman, unfortunately, does not stay mysterious for long and the Stiltskin-Swan-Cassidy-Charming-Mills family is about to get a whole lot more complicated.</p><p>An AU in almost every way one can make a universe alternate, based on prompts on Tumblr.</p><p>(Now with co-authory goodness starting after chapter 9!)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Return

**Author's Note:**

> Someone on the Once Upon a Time Confessions page on Tumblr wanted to see what would happen if Emma brought Milah back instead of Marian.
> 
> Well, THIS is what happens.
> 
> I hate that I have to do this, but apparently I do. If you're reading this fic anywhere besides AO3, it was posted without my consent and likely profited someone else. Please consider [donating](https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_donations&business=CZNGXGNP4PRX4&lc=US&item_name=The%20Mantis%20Fund&currency_code=USD&bn=PP%2dDonationsBF%3abtn_donate_SM%2egif%3aNonHosted) or swinging by my Tumblr (standbyyourmantis) to let me know what you thought!

 “That is the _last time_ we are going on a trip together, Neal!” Emma was near shouting from annoyance as they both checked for broken bones.

“Yeah, well it's not like this was a joyride for me either,” he grumbled, finding himself healthy and moving his attention to the unconscious woman at his feet.

“You know that you could have created a paradox, right?” Emma reminded him, nodding to the other woman. Like he needed reminding, he was the one who showed her _Back to the Future_ in the first place.

“Look, I'm sorry but I just couldn't watch my father kill some innocent woman, okay?” He'd not known exactly _why_ his papa was so intent on destroying this person, but he wasn't the type to sit back and watch as he did it.

Emma shot him a look, but kept silent. He knew she understood, knew she'd have done the same thing in his shoes, and he also knew it had been a mistake and that her being alive when she shouldn't was going to cause all kinds of problems. He just prayed to whoever was listening that it wouldn't be catastrophic.

As if on cue, the strange woman began to stir. She really looked very familiar, which Neal found disturbing. Granted, if she'd been running with pirates he may have known her on the Jolly Roger, but he didn't _think_ that was it.

Her eyes fluttered open and she looked around in shock between Neal and Emma, scrambling to her feet and searching for a sword at her hip that wasn't there.

“Where am I? Who are you?” she demanded. “My shipmates will come looking for me!”

“Hey, hey, hey,” Neal tried to soothe her with quiet words and slow movements, while Emma had (as always) reached for her omnipresent gun. “It's alright,” he murmured. “You're safe here. You were going to be killed but we brought you with us.”

“What's going on?” the strange woman was near hysterics now, and Neal couldn't say he blamed her. “Who are you people?”

“This is Emma,” he said softly, gesturing towards Emma to lower her handgun as he spoke. “And my name is Neal. You're in a place called Storybrooke in the Land Without Magic. Emma and I took you with us when we saw you were about to be killed. I'm sorry, but you're three-hundred years in the future. It was the only way to save you.”

The woman froze at this news and pressed her back against the barn wall, collapsing to the ground.

“They're all dead then?” she seemed so lost in that moment that Neal's heart broke for her. “All my shipmates? Even...even...”

She didn't cry, though, which he was glad for. Instead, she took a few deep hyperventilating breaths before seeming to push down the pain, locking it away for a time when she wasn't staring down two strangers in a barn. He could respect her for that, at least.

“What do I do now?” she finally asked him, looking to him for answers that he really wished he could give her.

“We'll take you to Granny's,” Emma broke in. “You can stay at the inn for a few days until we figure out a place for you here.”

The woman nodded, standing up and pulling herself together before nodding she was ready to wander into the night.

 

Neal had almost forgotten that the naming ceremony was today in all the excitement of falling through a time portal and rescuing a woman from his evil father. The same father who would be there today, now that he thought of it. He really, really hoped there wasn't an excellent reason this particular woman was supposed to be dead. He didn't think Belle would forgive him if this caused a scene in the middle of a christening, and he'd become rather fond of his father's girlfriend during their year in the Enchanted Forest together.

The mystery woman was still cagey, not wanting to give out her name or any personal information until she was settled someplace. He didn't blame her, but it sure made it hard to figure out who she might be related to in town if she refused to give up any information about herself. Emma was suspicious, but then she'd also not wanted to save the woman in the first place so he was pretty sure she was also a little pissed at him. She'd come around, she hadn't known his father when he was the Dark One. He couldn't just leave someone to that fate.

Neal made a mental note to warn the stranger that his father was still in town, but no danger to her anymore unless she tried something with him. It would be pretty bad if he saved this woman only to have her get decapitated for trying to kill his father, or worse, Belle.

“Hey,” he grabbed her arm and stopped her before she could enter the diner. “One thing I should mention before we go in. Things here...they're different than back home, yeah?”

“I can see that.”

Fair enough, she had seemed particularly entranced by the LED signs, but not exactly what he was going for.

“The thing is, not all the bad guys from our world are still bad here, so...” but he never got to finish his sentence.

Three things happened in quick succession that would set in motion events that would change Neal's life forever.

The first was Emma spying his father and Belle – who, Neal dimly noted, was wearing a white dress and carrying a bouquet of flowers and wasn't _that_ suspicious – walking past the diner and she stepped in front of the mystery woman to shield her from seeing his father. The second was Killian noticing Emma through the diner window and coming out with the puppydog eyes he tended to get around her. And the third, well, the third was the woman choosing that moment to reveal more than she intended.

“Killian?” the strange woman sounded breathless at his appearance, something akin to hope making her voice crack.

Killian's eyes shot from Emma to the woman and his face went through the most bizarre series of changes Neal had ever seen.

“...Milah?” he breathed, glancing between the assembled before finally settling for good on the brunette who Neal was suddenly able to place – he'd not seen his mother in over 300 years and had been a little boy when she left ( _dead,_ he reminded himself, _Papa said she was dead_ ) so of course he couldn't recognize her. Shit.

Emma was looking at him now, slack jawed and confused and his father was coming closer and Belle was there and oh gods this was a disaster but all Neal could do was just keep staring at this woman who had wrapped herself around Killian because that was his mother and she wasn't dead, she'd left him and the six-year-old who had lost her was just so damn happy to see her again but the man that child had become had just realized both his parents let him go and wasn't _that_ just a kick in the teeth?

“Baelfire,” his father had come a little too slow to realize the moment he was interrupting and Neal swallowed the lump in his throat as his mother turned to stare at him again now, eyes wide and shining with tears as she stared at him like a treasure she'd just stumbled upon.

“Baelfire?” she nearly sobbed and he could only nod in assent. “You've grown.”

“Yeah, Mama,” he whispered.

Except now his father was staring at his mother like someone had stepped in something and well, it made sense now why he'd been trying to kill her he guessed.

“Milah,” Rumpelstiltskin hissed, and Neal had watched his father turn a neighbor into a snail and crush him under his boot and he'd never known him to look or sound as dangerous as he did right now.

“Rumple?!” Milah finally turned to face his father with a look of horror on her face.

“Alright,” Emma broke in. “I am completely lost and someone is going to have to explain this to me.”

“Yeah,” Belle added quietly from his father's side. “I'm confused, too.”

And now that he saw them next to each other, wow Belle and his mother bore a strong resemblance to each other didn't they? His father certainly had a type and that type was apparently pale skinned brunettes.

“Oh, allow me to explain,” his father growled and Neal recognized the tenor of his voice and that the situation was becoming dangerous. “Belle, this is Milah, Baelfire's mother who abandoned us both and who I thought was raped and murdered by pirates until she faked her own death to run out on our friend Hook here and framed me. Milah, this is my new wife, the Lady Belle of Avonlea and heir to the Duke of the Marchlands. If you're looking for the proper title, I believe it's 'my lady.'”

The last bit was snarled out as though facing down a wild animal, and it seemed to have its intended effect of making Milah flinch.

Neal didn't have many memories of his mother, she'd not been the constant presence in his life his father had been and had left (apparently) when he was still a very little boy and today had proven just how little he really _did_ remember of her. However, what few memories he had of his parents together were of his mother berating his father for everything. He'd not quite understood as a child just how poorly they got along, he'd just known that Mama was always angry and Papa was always sad. The thing is, his father was a completely different man now and even if _he_ felt inclined to let her resume her previous behavior towards him, there was a very short Duke's daughter standing next to him and staring his mother down as though she were a rival tom cat who had just entered the yard.

Killian seemed to have taken the opportunity to try to fade into the woodwork, and given how he'd been mooning over Emma literally thirty seconds ago Neal couldn't say he blamed the pirate.

As he glanced back and forth between his parents and their assorted lovers and his son's mother and thanked his lucky stars that Henry hadn't seen fit to wander out to see what all the commotion was about (because wouldn't _that_ be a fun conversation), it began to dawn on Neal that he missed the good old days of fighting his evil grandfather or possibly the wicked witch that was obsessed with his father, because there was absolutely no contest that he'd rather stare down all the Lost Boys and a half dozen flying monkeys than have to deal with his parents again.

Their family had just become a whole hell of a lot more complicated.


	2. Charity Begins at Home

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Belle confronts Milah on her abandonment of her family.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So basically I decided that the Milah!verse should be in chapters and not in series form. So now it is. However, it will begin to be updated again!
> 
> Anonymous prompted:  
> Milah!Verse prompt Belle seeks Milah out to tell her how much Rumple has changed and though in a non spiteful way shows her how much she lost out on.

Belle tried really, really hard not to bang on the door.  She was being brave, but being brave didn’t mean she wasn’t also completely terrified.  Taking a deep breath to brace herself, she knocked on the door in what she thought was a very normal and not at all agitated way, thank you very much.

She even held her ground as the door opened and her new husband’s ex wife (at least Belle really hoped she counted as an ex-wife depending on how divorce laws worked and oh gods wasn’t this awful and confusing?) opened the door to glare at her.

"Can I help you?" Milah sounded frustrated and while Belle didn’t entirely blame her (it had been an unpleasant night for everyone after all) she was inclined enough to dislike the other woman that she was instantly defensive.  "Oh I’m sorry, I forgot.  Can I help you, my lady?”

Milah swept into a mocking curtsy at that and Belle decided to get her business over and done with and get the hell out of here.

"Here," she said, thrusting a basket at Milah that contained a variety of shampoos and soaps and various other feminine necessities Belle thought Milah might be in need of.  "I also wanted to invite you to dinner tomorrow with the whole family, seeing as you’re a part of it now."

Milah was staring blankly at the basket with a confused look on her face before snapping her attention back to Belle.

"I don’t need your charity, princess," Milah snapped but her tight grip on the basket gave lie to that statement.  Both women knew that Milah desperately needed what Belle had, and both knew that Milah was not at all happy about it.

Rumple and I are having Bae and Henry and Emma and her parents and Regina over for dinner tomorrow at seven,” Belle said again.  ”And you and Hook are welcome to come if you can behave.”

Milah let out a bark of laughter, setting the basket down on a table near the door to her room.

"You know," Milah said resignedly.  "There was a time when that would have been my family that you’re having over.”

"You left them," Belle reminded her, taking tentative steps into the room.  "You left Rumple and you left Bae.  You can’t blame me for stepping into their lives."

"I didn’t leave my son,” Milah shouted but they both knew it was a lie.  Milah had left him in every way that mattered.

Belle didn’t argue with her, but oh how she wanted to.

"Are you coming or aren’t you?" Belle said, crossing her arms in front of her chest crossly.  "I know it would mean a lot to Bae and Henry."

"What, so Rumple can lord his new wife and his big house over me?" Milah said with a shake of her head.  "No thank you."

Belle bit down the displeasure at this other woman using her nickname for her husband.  This other woman who had shared his bed and birthed his beloved son and then left them both never even looking back and realizing what kind of man she was giving up.  This woman who had broken him and left him for Belle to piece back together.

Belle almost wanted Milah to see her home now, just so she could claim sole dominion over at least one thing in her life.  Almost.

"Leave Rumple to me," Belle replied.  "If you want to come, I can promise you he will be on his best behavior if it means I have to lock him in a closet first."

Milah stared at Belle hard, confusion etched on her face.

"You really love him, don’t you?" she asked.  "At first I thought it must be magic or some sort of debt, but no.  You do love him."

"Of course I love him," Belle said simply.  "It’s true love.  I almost broke his curse."

Milah didn’t need to know the rest of that story, though.

The other woman sniffed haughtily, moving back to show Belle out the door.

"If it’s all the same," she said.  "I think I’ll skip dinner."

"Suit yourself," Belle shrugged.  "Keep the basket, though.  And if you need anything, just ask me.  We have enough and I won’t let Bae’s mother be homeless if I can help it."

Milah’s features darkened again as she shut the door on her, and Belle couldn’t help the delicious shiver she felt walking out of the B&B.  She shouldn’t feel so territorial about Milah, she knew.  Belle was a child of privilege, and Milah was not.  Belle had her true love, and as far as she knew Hook was someplace hiding on Prince David’s sofa.  Belle’s place in this ragtag society was secure and Milah was hanging by a thread.

Gods it felt good to have some revenge for the man her husband used to be who this woman had done everything in her power to hurt, though.

She would be the bigger person, but if being the bigger person sometimes meant that her husband’s ex might resent her then Belle wouldn’t complain.


	3. The Spinner & the Princess

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Belle and Rumple have a talk about his first marriage followed by some comfort.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ripperblackstaff prompted:  
> Milah!Verse : Rumple and Belle decide to make a Spinner and Lady Princess sexual rp and Milah sees them.
> 
> Okay well I THOUGHT I had more prompts than this for porn. What is wrong with you people? Turns out most of what I was remembering wasn’t prompts just discussions I had about it (I distinctly remember at least one person talking about Milah not believing Belle really loved Rumple until she caught them fucking but dunno where it is) which I am counting anyway so here we go. The Milah!verse porn. Slightly modified from the prompt as per my M.O. because I feel like this is slightly more in character.

Belle was still fuming a little when she got to the pawn shop. Milah definitely had a way of pushing her buttons, although she was willing to admit that at least part of the problem was that every time Belle saw her all she could think of was what it must have felt like for her husband to think he had failed his first wife so totally. If she were being brutally honest with herself, Belle would have to admit she couldn’t stop mentally comparing herself to Milah either, unsure whether she felt better about ways they were different or the ways they were similar.

Rumple turned from his spinning to look at her as she stomped into the back room without greeting him.

"Oh good," he said almost too cheerfully. "You’re already back."

"It wasn’t exactly a social call," she said in a huff.

"You shouldn’t have gone over there at all."

"We can’t exactly let her starve," she reminded him.

"Why ever not?" his voice had taken on the high register it did when he was well and truly agitated by something and Belle could hear the unspoken she would have let me starve in it.

"Because," she came around and put her hands on his shoulders. "We have so much here and she has nothing at all. We can spare a little. And it’s for your son more than her, you know. He wants her to be happy."

He grumbled, but didn’t argue. She knew he’d never argue with Bae’s happiness.

"It’ll be alright, Rumple," Belle combed her fingers through his hair as comfortingly as possible.

"I just…I never wanted to see her again, Belle." he shut his eyes and wrapped his arms around her waist, pressing his ear against her torso and holding her close.

"Is there something I need to know?" Belle asked as calmly as she could.

He tried to shake his head no but she ran fingertips through his hair and tipped his head back to look at her.

"Rumple, you can tell me anything. You know that."

He sighed in resignation at that.

"She…wasn’t ever a kind woman, but by the time Bae came along whatever patience she had for me had run out." He didn’t seem to want to continue, but she rubbed small circles encouragingly down his spine as far as she could reach until he continued. "She couldn’t stand the sight of me, by the end. It was almost a blessing when she went to the tavern, except that left our son alone. I just…" he took a deep breath, "she never laid a finger on Bae, at least."

The last part of his fragmented story was the worst, because of all that was implied by it.

"Well, now I don’t like her at all."

It was an understatement but it was all she could think to add.

"She was just never happy about having been stuck as the wife of a poor spinner."

"Well," Belle said sweetly. "The poor spinner seems to have caught the eye of a fine lady."

She was a bit uncomfortable that her title had come into play so much the last couple days, but she could see why it was so important to him to make the point to Milah now (and also, why Milah had been so hung up on it).

"Indeed?" he smiled up at her lovingly. "What would she have him do?"

She hummed a little in thought, knowing exactly what he wanted but determined to tease away his morose mood.

He responded by pulling her down onto his lap and tipping her back into a soft kiss.

“To start with,” Belle began in her most imperious lady of the keep voice, “he can put his clever fingers to good use.”

Rumple groaned into her neck, the vibrations tickling her ear and making her squirm. He had one arm wrapped around her back and supporting her on his lap, but his free hand began sliding up between her thighs. She gasped as he pressed the heel of his palm against her and rubbed slowly. The fabric added a delicious friction that she hadn’t quite anticipated and shot pleasure straight to her core. Belle yelped and grabbed his shirt in her fist in an attempt to ground herself again.

“Something else, my lady?” he teased.

“Take my tights off,” she managed to choke out. “Please, I need you to touch me.”

“As you wish,” he said with a wicked smirk, magicking her legs bare save for her skirt.

Belle felt as though she should protest his use of magic, or at least the loss of her favorite panties, but the second his fingers began probing at her entrance she couldn’t bring herself to care. Rumple certainly had deft fingers, no one could ever begin to deny that.

He plucked and probed at her just enough to tease her to the edge of oblivion before backing off, leaving her panting and wanting. Belle growled and adjusted herself on his lap so she sat straddling him with her knees on either side of his hips.

She grabbed his hands, placing them back on her thighs and, using his tie, pulled him into a hard, bruising kiss as he began trailing fingers back towards her clit. Belle moved her mouth down to his throat as he worked, the fingers of one hand beginning to probe inside of her as the other pinched and rubbed her clit in little circles.

She bit down on him hard, teasing his nipples through the fine fabric of his shirt. She needed to mark him, to provide this display of ownership. He seemed to understand her intent, tilting his head to provide her an even better patch of skin to mark.

Belle obliged him readily, licking and sucking until he bore a beautiful scarlet mark on his skin that would last days and be readily visible to anyone he met. No one need doubt that Rumplestiltskin’s wife found him desirable.

Rumple’s hands made quick work of her this time, his ministrations having her panting desperately against him until, with light bursting behind her eyes she felt the dam burst and wave after wave of pleasure flooded her veins as she gasped his name.

By the time she came back to herself, he was still looking at her with awe-struck eyes and she kissed him hard, her tongue dipping between his lips to taste him.

“Hey guys,” she heard a familiar voice suddenly and barely had time to turn to face the curtain separating the back room from the front before Bae swung the curtain open. “Guess who I found outsi – oh dammit, Papa!”

He cut himself off as he took in the situation he’d walked in on, spinning on his heel and back into the main room.

Even more embarrassingly, Belle realized that he had brought his mother with him and Milah was currently staring wide-eyed at the pair seated at Rumple’s wheel. Contrary to what she’d have expected, though, rather than trying to straighten them into something resembling a respectable position, Rumple’s hands tightened on her hips possessively as he glared at his former wife. Belle thanked her lucky stars that her skirt protected her modesty if nothing else.

“You could have knocked, Bae,” he said simply.

“It’s a business, Papa! I didn’t know I needed to!” Bae’s indignant voice came from out of view. “Forget it! I’ll come back later when you’re not…busy.”

Bae’s eyes were firmly closed as he grabbed his mother’s arm and pulled her away from the door and towards the exit.

“Can you flip the sign for us?” Belle called out sweetly from her position on her husband’s lap.

Her only answer was the door slamming, and she then focused on her husband again.

“Rumple?”

“Yes, sweetheart?” he said as sweetly as he could manage.

“What happened to the little bell on the door?”

“I ah…I may have taken it down.”

She rolled her eyes at that.

“Well, your little show seemed to have worked.”

“I have no idea what you are talking about,” he replied with a smile that she knew meant he wasn’t telling her the whole truth. “You’re not angry, are you?”

“No,” she sighed. “In fact, I think the only way I’ll be angry is if you don’t take me to that bed over there right now.”

“Whatever my lady wishes,” he said with a grin that told her she was in for a long afternoon.


	4. Lacey & Milah

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Belle has an accident at the town line, bringing Lacey back for a one-night only performance. Meanwhile, Milah is still hanging around town and holding a grudge against her ex-husband and his new wife. Unfortunately, Lacey is not Belle and isn't the sort to take the high road.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, it's been awhile since I did anything with the Milah!verse, but anonymousnerdgirl wanted to know what would happen if Lacey and Milah met. The answer is this.

 Honestly, Rumpelstiltskin had no idea why the hell Belle had been out at the town line in the first place (and as soon as she woke up again, he planned to find that out) but the important thing right now was that she had been, and now she was Lacey again. Fantastic. Well, on the plus side at least this time Lacey had memories of him and had come straight to his shop. He'd been able to convince her that she'd only missed a day, having gotten black out drunk with him the night before. She did seem a little suspicious given her lack of a hangover, but hadn't asked too many questions.

So now all he had to do was keep one very small woman out of trouble for twenty-four hours while the damned Blue Fairy mixed up another potion for her. Rumpelstiltskin would have frankly preferred to make the potion himself, but keeping Lacey out of trouble was damn near a full time job at the best of times and with Milah's presence in town he didn't really think he'd be able to swing both at the same time. Besides, he'd not done it before and the blasted fairy had – it was worth swallowing a little bit of pride to ensure it was done correctly and as fast as possible.

This was going to be especially rough considering that Milah had taken to frequenting Lacey's favorite haunt – The Rabbit Hole. Rumpelstiltskin had enlisted the help of his son in helping to keep his ex-wife and his new one (well, his new one's curse persona anyway) away from each other, and now he and Bae were following Lacey into the dimly lit bar that served as one of two places to visit in Storybrooke if you wanted to be out past midnight.

“Alright,” Lacey was all business as she slipped onto a bar stool and ordered herself two shots. “So what's going on, Gold?”

“What do you mean?” he said calmly, glancing around to where Bae had split off to find his mother and the pirate.

“I mean since when do you want me to hang out with your son? And why the hell am I wearing a wedding ring?”

“Ah, that,” he looked down at her hand where it sat on the bar. “Alright, here's the thing, Lacey...my ex wife is in town.”

Gods did he hope that honesty was the best policy here – or at least semi-honesty, anyway.

“And?” Lacey looked at him impatiently.

“And...we didn't part on the best of terms,” he was trying really hard to be as truthful as possible, he'd promised to stop lying to Belle but this was Lacey (how did that work with their marriage, anyway?). “And she thinks we're married.”

He watched her face as she absorbed this new bit of information. Lacey had may have had many vices – she drank too much, she flirted too much, and she was more than willing to cause a bit of trouble – but she was damned loyal once she settled on someone and he knew she'd be game to go along with this if he asked it of her.

Lacey glanced over her shoulder to where Bae was talking in low tones with his mother and the pirate, taking in this woman whom he belatedly realized she was going to take as potential competition.

“That her?”

He nodded mutely, and she tossed back the first of her shots, glancing back to see if they were being watched before grabbing his face in her hands and kissing him hard, working her fingers through his hair and slipping her tongue into his mouth.

It was going to be a long night.

 

“Mama,” Neal said again, he was becoming exasperated. “As a personal favor to me, please don't cause a scene with Belle...I mean Lacey.”

“I'm not the one who causes scenes,” she reminded him. “That's more your father's style.”

Neal wasn't sure whether he wanted to shake her or start pulling his own damn hair out. Lacey at least had the excuse of being a curse persona for her poor behavior, his mother was just being difficult for the sake of getting to be 'right.'

Unfortunately, Lacey chose that moment to needle his mother by kissing his father full on the mouth. She was practically crawling into his lap, actually. Oh, lord. Neal wasn't sure he was old enough to see this.

His mother, meanwhile, was just drunk enough to be fuming at the public display of affection that the woman who was sort of his step-mother (but honestly, how did that work?) was currently performing on his father. Why did he agree to play go-between, again? Oh right, because nobody else was dumb enough to get between the three of them. At least Killian seemed unfazed by the entire scene unfolding before them, although Neal wasn't entirely sure that wasn't because Killian was completely shitfaced. So now he had an angry mother, a drunk pirate, a cursed step-mother, and a father who (while possibly the only other person in the room who didn't want to see this end badly) currently was letting said step-mother feel him up in a bar. Fan-fucking-tastic.

“Mama,” Neal said softly. “Just ignore them. Please. For me.”

“Fine,” Milah said to her drink. “I'll ignore them.”

Neal breathed a sigh of relief, glancing between his mother and her boyfriend.

“Thank you,” he said. “I appreciate that. How about next round on me, okay?”

“Cheers, mate,” Killian said to that, his mother continuing her sulk.

Neal rose, walking over to the bar to order a round of beer for the table and also maybe to see if he could pry Lacey off his father (or vice versa) long enough to get them to leave. In all his years of life, he had never had a more uncomfortable sensation than standing immediately behind Lacey while she tried to make his mother jealous of his father and waiting for his beer.

He tapped her on the shoulder at last, more to put a stop to the show than for any particular reason.

“Excuse me, Lacey,” he said as calmly as he could manage. “Can I borrow my father for a minute?”

She eyed him quickly, in a way that reminded him so much of Belle that it felt like a punch to the gut for a minute. How the hell had his papa handled it the last time this happened?

“Alright,” she said, turning back to his father. “I'll be waiting.”

She drank the shot of something that had been sitting in front of her, sliding off her stool and wandering over to the pool tables.

“Um, I take it she took the news well?” Neal said pointedly to his father. “You were supposed to be keeping her out of trouble. Mama looks like she's about to strangle her.”

“I'd like to see her try,” his father grumbled. “Anyway, I'm trying to keep her out of trouble. But Lacey isn't Belle! I can't just hand her a library and send her on her way. She likes trouble, son. It's like trying to keep a fish out of water.”

“I can't believe I'm about to say this, but could you at least take her back to your house, then? Or the shop? Or someplace where she can maul you in private?”

His father was quiet for a long, long time, looking pensively away towards Lacey.

“If I do that she'll want to have sex,” he finally said.

“So? You've done it before,” Neal exclaimed. “I've walked in on you doing it before.”

“That's different, that was Belle. This...isn't.”

Oh.

“Gods, Papa,” Neal said, dropping to the stool Lacey had abandoned. “I'm sorry. I wasn't thinking about it like that.”

“It's no matter,” his father said, downing the rest of his drink and preparing to go meet up with his...something. “It's my problem and I'll...”

Neal never did find out what his father would do, because at that moment they both noticed that his mother was no longer sitting with Killian. Both men followed Killian's gaze to where Milah and Lacey were shooting pool. Oh, oh gods. There was literally no way this could end well.

Neal shot up off his stool and went back to where Killian still sat, watching Milah and Lacey as his father began to approach them the way one might expect a man to approach a pair of tigers.

“What the hell, Killian?” Neal whispered. “I thought we were all supposed to keep them away from each other.”

“What was I supposed to do?” he asked, slurring his words just a little. “Tackle her? Anyway, your mother can take care of herself.”

“I'm not just worried about her, you jackass,” Neal replied. “And yes, next time tackle her if you need to.”

Killian looked affronted, and Neal thought he might try to defend himself further but he didn't have time to hear it. His father had now reached the pair of them and seemed to be trying to engage Lacey in conversation. Neal knew that adding his father to whatever the hell these two had going on would only throw fuel onto the fire, but he also knew that separating them was the only way this could end happily, so he quickly joined his family at the pool table.

“Hey, guys,” he tried to be as cheerful as possible. “What's going on over here?”

“Lacey and I were just getting to know each other,” his mother said with so much false sweetness she could have been a diet soda. “She's just afascinating woman, did you know she's lived in Storybrooke her entire life?”

This last was said as an insult, even though Neal couldn't for the life of him figure out how it could possibly be one. Lacey, however, took it in the spirit in which it was intended, narrowing her eyes and gripping her pool cue tighter.

“Yes, you know I had no idea that Gold liked such old women,” Lacey said, her barb landing just as sweetly as his mother's.

Neal flinched, and he could see his father trying to figure out how to pry them apart but his brain seemed to have betrayed him and he was currently just staring at Lacey with his mouth hanging open.

“Well, he's still older than me, dear,” Milah replied, taking a swig of beer and setting up her shot. “But then, I know how hard it can be for girls whose fathers weren't active in their lives to relate to men their own age.”

Lacey flashed a near manic smile, before settling into a wicked smirk.

“That's true, but then there are things to be said for an older lover. Experience, for one thing,” she looked over to Killian for a minute and Neal didn't like where this was going at all. “And of course, financial security.”

That seemed to snap his father out of his trance, at least.

“Lacey,” his papa whispered into her hair. “Maybe we should go...”

“No,” Lacey cooed in a submissive way that Neal had never heard either her or Belle use, spinning around and draping herself over Rumpelstiltskin's front. “I'm having such a good time.”

There was a hard edge to her words towards the end and Neal was looking back and forth between his mother and step-mother trying to decide if it would help things if he faked a heart attack or if either of them would have even noticed when his mother decided to escalate.

“Yes, you should listen to your husband,” she said dismissively. “Run home, Rumple. And take your trollop with you.”

Rumpelstiltskin flinched, and Neal didn't know if Lacey took offense more towards the implication she was a whore or towards Milah's dig at his father, but either way she spun around and suddenly they were no longer tigers circling each other – this was about to be a fight.

“Excuse me?” Lacey said. “What did you just call me?”

“You heard what I said,” Milah shot back, intentionally not looking at Lacey, which only pissed Lacey off more.

“You fucking wanna go?” Lacey yelled, grabbing Milah's arm and turning her forcefully.

Neal wasn't sure if it was brave or stupid of her – his mother was taller than his father and had spent the last few years living as a pirate, whereas Lacey was a tiny little thing and Belle preferred to get her excitement from books. They were painfully mismatched.

His father seemed to realize the same thing, grabbing for Lacey's arm only to have her shrug him off.

“You wanna go?” Lacey said again, getting right up in his mother's face.

For her part, Milah did, in fact, seem to want to start a fight. She looked down at the woman who was threatening her and laughed. It wasn't a friendly laugh, or a happy laugh, it was bitter and angry and Lacey seemed to understand exactly what the taller woman was doing, neither relaxing or backing down. Neal looked over at his father who looked just as horrified by this turn of events as he felt, and then he looked at Killian who was now leaning forward with wide eyes absolutely fixed on the events unfolding before him. Jackass.

Milah had stopped laughing, and was now staring directly into Lacey's face. Both women seemed to be waiting for the other to make the first move, and people were beginning to notice. The atmosphere at the bar was charged, the other conversations dropping off as people began to notice the two women staring at each other. Everyone was waiting. Finally, something happened.

In one quick move, Lacey grabbed Milah's empty bottle off the side of the pool table, swinging it hard at his mother's face. Fortunately for everyone (since he knew Belle wouldn't want to have that on her conscience), his mother backed away fast enough to avoid the strike. She took a swing at Lacey, which connected and caused the smaller woman to stumble a bit. She didn't go down, though, instead Lacey shrieked in anger and lunged for Milah, jumping on the other woman and knocking her to the ground. Then, all hell broke loose.

Lacey, somehow, managed to knock his mother to the floor, landing a few blows to her face before Milah managed to grab hold of her hair and pull her off. The two of them were rolling around and screeching and Neal was now painfully aware that both of these women were sort of his mothers and they were also both his age or younger physically. He should really see if Archie offered therapy for this sort of thing. Killian had joined the assembled crowd in cheering for them to continue, while his father was watching with a look on his face that Neal really wished he didn't recognize as attraction.

Apparently, nobody else was going to break this up (although he heard the bartender yelling that he was calling the sheriff, because why not add Emma to this awkward family reunion?) so it fell to Neal. He waited until Lacey was on top again, grabbing her around her waist and pulling her physically off of his mother. She was a scrapper, he had to give her that, shrieking and kicking and screaming the entire way up. He almost dropped her once, before finally managing to set her more or less on the ground in front of his father, who took the opportunity to hook his arms around her waist to keep her from going back at Milah.

Neal helped his mother up, holding her arms tight so she couldn't take another swing at the now restrained Lacey. He took a quick survey of the damage, his mother had a bloody nose and Belle would be sporting quite a nice black eye when she woke up, but otherwise both seemed relatively unharmed.

Lacey was still thrashing a little and insisting his father let her go, while his mother glared at her and kept shooting taunts. Neal was debating whether or not he had enough money to get drunk enough to forget this ever happened, when the door swung open and Emma entered the room. She was followed quickly by David, because of course his son's most normal grandparent should walk into this little family drama. It was like a fucking episode of COPS!

 

Emma had just wanted a quiet night at home, dammit. With Zelena gone and no new villains immediately arising to take her place, things had been going pretty smooth. Even with the warning she'd gotten from Neal that Lacey was back in town for one night only, Gold has insisted he could handle it and she'd had a pretty good feeling that she may be able to spend an evening with her new brother and her parents. Then she'd gotten a call that shit was going down at the Rabbit Hole and that she might want to come over as her son's grandparents were involved. David, of course, had insisted on coming with her in case she needed backup. So now instead of being at home kicking Henry's ass at Monopoly, she was standing in a smoky bar looking at two of her son's three grandmas try to claw each other's eyes outs.

Never let it be said that Gold didn't like girls with a lot of spine.

“What the hell, Gold?” Emma said, trying to avoid the reach of the petite woman in his arms who still looked about ready to cut a bitch. “I thought you told me you could handle her at home.”

“Well clearly I'm working on that,” he retorted sarcastically. “This is a little more difficult than last time, forgive me.”

“Dammit,” Emma muttered, scribbling details in her little notepad as David began interviewing witnesses. “You do realize this is kind of serious? She tried to hit her with a beer bottle?”

“Bitch fucking started it!” Belle – Lacey, Emma corrected mentally – replied, still squirming in Gold's arms but not as much anymore.

“She hit me first!” Milah yelled from where Neal was holding her. There was blood trickling down her face, Lacey had clearly done a pretty good job on her before they were pulled apart.

“And I'd do it again!” Lacey yelled back.

“Lacey,” Gold whispered loud enough for Emma to hear. “Be quiet, sweetheart, please.”

She stopped struggling, turning to look at him a little before nodding softly in agreement. Apparently just now remembering that Gold was one of two attorneys in town.

Killian, meanwhile, slid off his bar stool and came to stand near Emma. This was not missed by either Milah or Neal, who were both looking at him with something akin to disbelief on their faces. Oh lord, Gold was going to owe her so much liquor after this.

“Okay,” Emma said finally. “I think I'm going to have to take both of you to jail for the night.”

“What?” the two women yelled in tandem.

“I'm not going to try to get to the bottom of who started what tonight,” she replied. “You were both fighting and both drunk and we can sort this all out in the morning. After everyone makes bail.”

Both women were now glaring daggers at her. She really just wanted this to be over, though. Tomorrow, the potion for Lacey should be finished and with Belle back the odds of Emma getting called to deal with any other barroom brawls would go down substantially.

“Can I speak to you privately, Miss Swan?” Gold said, releasing Lacey to pull Emma away a bit.

David came to stand nearby, just in case Lacey got any ideas about lunging at Milah again.

“You can't make her spend the night in jail,” he said. “She doesn't know what she's doing!”

“You clearly can't keep her out of trouble,” Emma pointed out. “And I can't just lock Milah up for Lacey throwing a punch at her! Tomorrow, I'll let them both out and you can give her the potion and work out whatever weird sex thing you two have going on. At least this way she'll be safe!”

“Fine,” he growled. “But don't tell her I said it was okay.”

“Wouldn't dream of it,” Emma said.

“Alright ladies,” she took a hold of Lacey and began cuffing her. David took Milah from Neal and cuffed her as well. “I think everyone here needs to just sleep it off, and then we'll get the rest of this handled in the morning.”

Lacey looked over at Gold with shock on her face, and Emma felt sort of bad for Belle. She was going to have a lot of aches and pains that she didn't earn in the morning.

“It's just for the night, dear,” Gold said to her. “I'll get you in the morning and make bail. Just don't say anything to anyone.”

She nodded again, squaring her shoulders and pulling lightly on her cuffs still. Emma was so glad she didn't have to spend the night with the two of them, at least. Neither one was going to make the evening easy on the other one, even if she put them in non-adjacent cells.

They really needed to reevaluate the whole town line situation after this was over.

 

The next morning, Rumpelstiltskin arrived at the jail bright and early to fetch his wife. She and Milah were sitting on their cots in their cells (thankfully, separated by a third cell in between them) and glaring at each other. He seriously doubted either one had gotten any sleep at all. Belle was going to murder him for letting this all happen, although it may have been worth it just for the image of her in a fist fight over him. That was certainly something that had never, ever happened before. And he'd kind of liked it. She was literally going to kill him.

Emma, of course, was sitting at her desk and accepted his gift of a box of donuts with all the good grace he'd have expected from a woman who had been dragged out late at night to arrest his wife.

“So these two have been quiet all morning, at least,” she said with a nod towards the cells. “Did Blue finish the thing for you?”

He pulled the little bottle out of his jacket pocket and showed her before slipping it back in.

“Good, I'll give you half an hour to get her home and get this taken care of before I release Milah.”

“Thank you, Miss Swan,” he said as Emma rose and unlocked the cell Lacey had been inhabiting.

“Yeah, you're just lucky you brought the bear claws.”

“I'll keep that in mind for next time.”

“There better not be a next time,” she warned him as Lacey stumbled out.

Lacey shot Milah a haughty smirk before stumbling over to him and letting him wrap her in his arms.

“Your ex is a psycho,” she muttered into his chest.

“Come on, love,” he replied. “Let's get you home and some breakfast and then we'll figure this all out.”

She nodded, clinging to him as he led her out to the car and drove her home.

 

Once they were home, he made tea (hers, of course, spiked with the potion) and offered her the chipped cup. It was a testament to how tired she was that she didn't even make any comments on it, instead tossing the drink back wearily. He waited a moment, seeing the exact moment her face shifted ever so slightly, letting him know the fairy had done her job correctly.

“How do you feel?” he asked her gently.

“Oh my gods, Rumpelstiltskin!” Belle's voice was sharp. “Did you really let me get into a bar fight with Milah last night?!”

“In my defense,” he said. “You really held your own.”

“I tried to break a bottle over her face!”

“And it was incredibly attractive...”

She shot him a look that said she was not amused, at all.

“I'm sorry, sweetheart,” he said softly. “It just got completely out of hand.”

“Gods, you're so lucky that my head feels like someone stepped on it,” she muttered. “That woman can keep up a grudge, apparently. But I guess you'd know that.”

He shrugged sympathetically and kissed her on the head.

“Would you like a nap and then we can have lunch?”

“Yeah,” she yawned. “But I want a shower first. I smell like an ashtray and my hair feels like a bird's nest.”

“Alright,” he came around to help her up. “And afterward, we really need to discuss what happened at the town line.”

She glanced at him, but nodded in quiet agreement.

“Rumple?” she said as he walked her up the stairs to the bathroom.

“Yeah, sweetheart?”

“Did you really just tell me you thought it was attractive when I tried to kill your ex-wife?”


	5. For Old Time's Sake

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Set the night of Lacey & Milah, Neal tries to drink away the memory of his mother and his step-mom in a drunken barfight. Emma keeps him company, but when they end up leaving together feelings come to the surface.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Anonymousnerdgirl said:  
> Milah!verse: Emma and Neal are in a state of exhaustion due to their parents' drama. Solution- hot chocolate spiked with cinnamon schnapps and dry humping in the backseat of the Bug.
> 
> Paradiceseeker replied to your post:  
> I don't know if this counts as a prompt or not, but I would like to see them talk to each other in general. One of my biggest flats with A&E is that they never allowed them to really have a heart to heart, one way or another.
> 
> I'm sticking more to the spirit of these prompts than the letter of them.

Tonight, Neal was drinking to forget. He knew there wasn't really enough alcohol in the world to make him forget that not two hours ago he had broken up a cat fight between his mother and his new step-mother. Or that his father had been stunned into inaction through arousal at the sight. Literally never enough alcohol. David had swung by after he and Emma had brought both women in to spend the night in the jail, which Neal thought was nice of him since he was probably the only man in town who wasn't silently cursing Neal for breaking the fight up.

They hadn't spoken since David had plopped down on the stool next to Neal, but it was still nice to have company.

“Really, it wasn't that bad,” David finally said between sips of beer. “It's just one of those awkward side-effects of time travel and stasis. Emma once walked in on me and Snow in bed.”

“I've walked in on Dad and Belle,” Neal pointed out. “More than once.”

David inhaled sharply, choking on his beer.

“That sounds pretty rough,” he forced out between coughs.

It had been, but the less said about that the better. Instead, Neal tossed back a shot and put another one on Lacey's tab. His father would be coming by the next day to pay for it, and he could cover the cost of Neal drinking away this memory. It was cheaper than therapy, anyway.

“So how is your father taking Lacey being back?” David asked after Neal didn't say anything further. “I remember last time was a little...rough.”

That was an understatement. Last time, Neal had to stop his father from forcing Frankenstein to lick his shoe in the street to impress her.

“Better,” Neal admitted. “I think knowing it's a one night thing made it easier. Plus there's not as much pressure to impress her because she came looking for him. It's still pretty rough on him, though. Mom being around doesn't help.”

“I bet.”

The silence was awkward as hell, and as much as Neal appreciated that David was trying to keep him company, he didn't want to talk about his father or his mother or Lacey. He really wanted to go to bed, but his mother (and, more importantly tonight, Killian) had a room at Granny's. His father would be doing his own drinking at home and Neal didn't want to interrupt.

The door opened again (it was a little late for new arrivals to the bar, wasn't it?) and David quickly drained his beer.

“Well, I'd better be off,” David said. “Snow's alone with the baby and Henry. If I stay out too much later I might end up living with your dad, too.”

Neal smirked a bit at the image of Prince Charming bunking down with the Dark One and his new bride – he may have had a bit too much to drink.

“See ya around, David. Thanks for the company.”

“No problem,” David said over his shoulder as he walked away.

Neal's solitude didn't last as long as he'd thought it would. Apparently the late arrival had been Emma, who quickly climbed into her father's vacant stool.

“This seat taken?” she said with a forced cheer.

“Is now,” he replied, directing the bartender to add Emma to Lacey's tab as well. “So how are my moms doing?”

“Well, I didn't put them in adjacent cells so they should both survive the night. When I left they were screaming at each other, though.”

He couldn't suppress the bitter smile that came up at that.

“You gotta feel kind of sorry for them,” Emma continued. “It's been kind of rough on your mom since she landed. And Lacey...”

Emma finished on a shrug and Neal didn't need her to finish that sentence. And Lacey is a curse persona, she can't really help it. He didn't need a reminder of who these women were or why they were important to him. That was why he was drinking.

“You know,” he said. “If you'd told me when I was a kid in Neverland that someday I'd be reunited with both my parents but that it'd be like this...”

He shook his head and Emma gave him a grin.

“So how you holding up?” she said. “Aside from, you know, your mom and step-mom trying to kill each other over your dad.”

“Not so bad,” he replied. “It's weird having both my parents back. Plus the assorted step-parents who are younger than me. Plus the stuff with you and Killian...”

He cringed at himself, he hadn't really meant to say the last part but he was feeling brave and stupid in equal measure – he should probably stop drinking.

“There's not really anything with me and Killian,” Emma said as she sipped her drink. “There was that stuff on Neverland, but then the second curse happened and then your mom showed up and...nothing.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah, I think he's a little freaked out that she's back all of a sudden.”

“Can't say that I blame him. He spent three hundred years trying to avenge her death, after all. He's sort of honor-bound to at least give it a shot with her.”

She chuckled at that.

“It'd be kind of weird if he didn't,” she said. “She's my son's grandma, after all. That's a family dynamic I don't need.”

“Yeah, you're telling me.”

Emma didn't reply, instead she just shot him a knowing look and took another sip of her drink.

 

By closing time, Neal was pretty sure he was still drunker than Emma but she had made a solid effort to catch up. It was nice, actually. Things had been so weird between everyone since he'd first found out about Henry, and sometimes he honestly missed just spending time with Emma. She was one of the only real friends he'd ever had and he missed her sometimes. Not necessarily in a romantic way, he just missed having someone to talk to about family and shit.

“I've missed you too,” she said as they stumbled out onto the street.

Fuck, had he said that last part out loud?

She broke out into drunk laughter and he belatedly realized he'd said that part out loud, too. Shit, he was wasted.

“So,” he decided to try being smooth. “You going back to the loft tonight?”

She looked at him out of the corner of her eye. She knew him too well.

“I dunno,” she confessed. “I don't really wanna risk waking the baby on Snow, and it's pretty late.”

“Yeah,” he agreed off-handedly. “It's too late to rent a room at the B&B, and if I go back to my father's house he'll want to talk about what happened.”

“So where are you going?”

“I was trying to figure that out, actually,” he admitted, glancing around to see if anything struck him. Turns out, something did. “I've got kind of a crazy idea, but I'm not sure if I should tell the sheriff.”

She had been his partner in crime more often than he could even remember, and he knew she'd take his bait as soon as he dropped it.

“Well, if you're telling me there's about to be a crime in progress I should probably tail you.”

He grabbed her hand and led her down the street towards the pawn shop. This had the potential to either be a great idea or a really terrible one, but he just had to see how it went.


	6. Before the Feeling Fades

“I told you,” Neal said as he twisted the pins in the lock to the backdoor of his father's shop. “It's all about tumblers.”

“I feel like I probably shouldn't be standing here watching you commit a felony,” Emma teased him. “Even if it is your father's shop.”

“For one thing,” Neal replied. “He'd never press charges and you know it. And for another, what are you gonna do, cuff me?”

“I could put you in the cell between Lacey and your mom and he could bail you both out tomorrow,” Emma replied.

“As fun as that sounds, I think I'm going to have to throw myself on the mercy of the justice system.”

“You can try,” she said. “But I doubt you'll get very far.”

Neal smiled at that. He was suddenly struck with the urge to reach out and touch Emma's cheek. He didn't know where it came from, but he was just drunk enough to go with it. If she slapped his hand away, he could blame it on the liquor in the morning. She didn't slap him off, though. She didn't turn away from him or pull back or anything. But she also didn't turn into his hand, or make any sort of encouragement. He wanted to kiss her then, but he refrained. Instead returning to his position at the door.

“Don't you have a key or something?” Emma said, bouncing on her feet a little bit to keep the cold at bay. “It's freezing out here.”

“Now where's the fun in that?” he said with a wink, clicking the last of the tumblers into place and swinging the door open. “Ladies first.”

She scowled at him, but walked into the dark back room anyway, looking around with detached curiosity as he flipped on a light.

“So what's the plan?” she said, turning to look at him. “You're just going to spend the night in that little bed he keeps back here?”

“Nah, probably the floor,” he tried to sound nonchalant but he knew way too much about what went on in that daybed. He was pretty sure the floor was safe, at least. Also some of the walls. He had his doubts about the counter tops, though. It was really best not to think too hard about any of it, actually.

“Your big plan was to break into your dad's shop and spend the night on the floor of a pawn shop?” Emma said with a teasing note to her voice. “You sure know how to show a girl a good time, Cassidy.”

“Is that what I'm doing?” he asked, leaning back against the wall. “Showing a girl a good time?”

“Isn't it?” she said with a shrug. “Why else bring me here?”

“Do you want...” he paused mid-sentence, rubbing his face with his hands and wishing he were just a little bit more sober to have this conversation. “Do you want me to show you a good time?”

Oh for fuck's sake, they had a child together. Could one of them just say the word sex and get it over with?

“I dunno,” she said with a nearly predator gleam in her eye. “I guess that depends on who's offering.”

“Look, Emma,” he wanted to tell her he still loved her, wanted to let her know he'd never really loved another woman quite the same way and that he wanted her, not just for one night but for always. He couldn't quite bring himself to say it, though. She was still looking at him and dammit, it was Emma. Here's the thing, Neal had always been a man of action. Words were his father's stock and trade but Neal preferred to just do things when they needed to be done, and dammit he needed to do this.

It only took him a second to be next to her, his hands on her cheeks holding her steady while he pressed his lips against hers. He hadn't kissed her since well, since times he didn't want to think about. Not now, not with her wrapping her arms around his back and leaning into him. He stifled a groan as he felt her fisting his shirt, her fingers pressing into his skin. It had been too long since he'd last touched her, and he'd forgotten how much he liked this. She parted her lips without prompting, and he took the invitation to deepen the kiss and run his tongue along her teeth.

Emma had always been straight forward, and he'd liked that about her. So when she pressed her body against his he knew what she wanted. The problem was, he wasn't sure that was what he really wanted anymore. Not that he didn't want Emma, he just...wanted more.

Still, though, it was damn hard to stop when she wasn't making any move to pull away from him for the first time since well, since everything had happened.

He broke the kiss first, brushing his lips across the corner of her mouth and then down to her neck. She leaned her head back and he took full advantage, leaving a trail of wet kisses down to her shoulder.

“Emma,” he groaned her name to remind himself that she was really there, but also because dammit he had to say this before they went too far. “This isn't a one time thing.”

“Why not?” she said with a half smile, her fingers coming to the front of his shirt to pry open the buttons one by one.

“You know why not,” he replied. “We have too much history.”

And they had too much present, as well. He still loved her and whether she wanted to admit it in a non-life and death situation or not, she loved him. He couldn't accept a one-night-stand here. That wasn't what he was after.

“Look,” she said, stepping back for a minute. “I don't know what else I have to give right now. Everything is just really fucking complicated right now.”

He appreciated her honesty, at least.

“What's so complicated?”

“Well, I did just arrest your mother and step-mom.”

“So? What's that got to do with us?”

“It's just...it's weird, okay?”

“Trust me, I know that,” he said and he cupped her face in his hands again, leaning forward a bit to kiss her forehead. “And if you need time or whatever you know you can have it. I'm just...I love you, Emma. I'm not going anywhere, but I love you and I need us to be on the same page about that.”

Her eyes went wider at his admission, even though she had to have known it already. He'd said it before. Granted, he'd been hanging in a portal to the Enchanted Forest at the time, but he'd said it. He'd meant it, too. He'd always mean it.

“I just don't have that to give right now,” she said finally, frowning at her own words. It hurt, but he'd suspected it anyway. “But I might soon.”

It was the second part of her admission that stunned him. He'd not expected soon. He'd hoped for soon, but there was a lot of betrayal and heartbreak between them. Soon was good. He could work with soon.

“Soon as in when I sober up or soon as in before Henry graduates?”

He couldn't hep that little tease, or the smirk that crept across his face as he said it. Emma smiled back and it was a real smile because she had gotten the joke and he loved that about her.

“Why don't you try the sobering up first and then we'll see how it goes from there?” she said as she moved past him to the door. “Goodnight, Neal.”

He couldn't help grabbing her around the waist and kissing her hard one more time.

“Goodnight, Emma,” he said softly. She turned to look back at him once in the doorway before turning the corner 


	7. Marked Territory

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rumple goes to Emma for help, Belle and Milah begin to stake their claims.

 Rumple ended up letting Belle sleep until early afternoon. When she woke, she was a bit overwarm, but pleasantly so. She stretched out languidly under the covers, glad to be clean and warm and safe and _herself_ again. The memories of her time as Lacey finally roused her, though. There were things to be discussed – like how exactly she'd wound up that way. She sat up, preparing to cast off the covers (even though they were so, so warm) when the door swung open quietly and her husband entered bearing a tray of food.

“Hey,” he said softly and she couldn't help the little flip of her stomach at the smile that bloomed across his face the moment he saw her. “I thought you might be hungry.”

“You thought right,” she replied. “How'd you know I was up?”

“I took a guess,” he said as he set his tray down on the end table. “It's good to have you back.”

“It's good to be back.”

He smiled again at that, sitting next to her on the bed. She snuggled into him, happy to add his warmth to her own. He was glad to have her back, even though she'd only been gone a little while.

After awhile, her stomach growled, reminding them both that she'd last eaten sometime the day before. She reached around him, grabbing a bowl of strawberries off of his tray and happily settling back down against his body.

“Sweetheart,” he finally said. “We need to talk about what happened yesterday. At the town line.”

“We do,” she said with a sigh, her strawberries losing some of their appeal. “Honestly I don't remember much. I got a note at the library asking me to go there...”

“Who was it from?” he said tersely, stiffening against her.

“I thought it was from you, at first,” she replied. “Then I got there and didn't see anyone. Somebody pushed me, I fell, and that was that. Lacey didn't see anyone, either, when she turned around.”

He made a little noncommittal noise that she was having trouble deciphering.

“Do you know what it means?” she asked him, hoping to prod him for more information.

“No, I don't,” he replied, holding her tighter.

“We're going to have to let Emma know,” she said. “Before anyone else gets hurt.”

“I suppose you're right,” he said sullenly.

“She _is_ the savior, after all,” she reminded her husband. “We can't just let the town be surprised.”

She could feel that he was smiling as he pressed a kiss to the top of her head. It was good to be back.

 

Emma was nursing a coffee across from Henry as he sipped his cocoa. She shouldn't have stayed out so late, knowing she had to be up early for work, but that was behind her now. Anyway, it wasn't often she got an excuse to go out with the kid and all. She'd survive one day on slightly less sleep. Neal wasn't looking quite as good as she was, sitting at the counter with his head resting in his arms. He'd been asleep when they arrived, and she'd not had the heart to let Henry wake him. No telling if he'd gotten any sleep at all the night before.

Emma didn't even really bother glancing over when she heard the door open. On any given day it wasn't uncommon to see half the town in Granny's, and today was unlikely to be any exception to the rule. Anyway, she was enjoying an afternoon with her son and would not be disturbed by any of the lunacy that seemed to rule the town.

So, of course, Gold and Belle appeared next to their table.

“Miss Swan,” Gold said in greeting. “Might we have a word?”

Emma groaned internally. Gold had a tendency to circle the wagons when things went south and to try to draw Belle and Neal (and, presumably, Henry) away from everyone else. The fact that he wanted to speak to Emma at all meant there was something that he didn't think he could handle by himself. Fantastic. Just what she needed.

“Hey Henry,” Belle said, her eyes darting over to where Neal was snoring lightly on the counter. “Let's go say hi to your dad.”

“Sure, Grandma,” Henry replied cheerfully, sliding out of the booth.

“You know,” Emma heard Belle say as they walked away. “'Belle' is _really_ fine.”

Emma hid her smirk behind a sip of coffee, but Gold had no such protection as he slid into the booth Henry had vacated.

“So, what's up?” Emma asked when, rather than immediately speaking, he kept watching his wife as she roused his son and took up an animated conversation.

“Someone lured Belle to the town line,” he replied. “And pushed her over it.”

“They _pushed_ her?” Emma repeated. “And she didn't see who did it?”

“If she had, we'd be having a very different conversation, I assure you.”

“No offense,” she shot back. “I'm just having trouble figuring out who might have it in for Belle.”

Gold she'd have understood – hell, Emma had come damn close to throttling him a handful of times herself and she was pretty sure he liked her. There were any number of people who might want to shove him over the town line starting with his father-in-law and ending with...well, she wasn't even sure the list would end. But Belle was literally a Disney Princess. She kept to herself, ran the library, and was nice to everyone. Aside from last night's appearance by Lacey she'd even been nice to Milah. Beyond that, any idiot in town knew if you so much as looked at Belle funny you were basically inviting Gold to bring down the full force of his Dark One powers on them. It wasn't worth it at all, unless you were Hook and also had a death wish.

The door opened again, and she saw Gold's eyes narrow suspiciously before she turned around and saw the face of perhaps the only person who might actually have a grudge against Belle and be willing to start shit with Gold – her son's other _other_ grandmother, Milah.

Emma reflexively looked over to where Neal, Belle, and Henry sat at the counter giggling and sipping milkshakes together. She knew Gold was glaring as his ex approached the cluster of them, but thankfully he didn't make a move even as Milah sat with them and seemed to try to begin distracting Henry and Neal from Belle. Belle, however, didn't seem particularly inclined to surrender her place. She was now maternally patting Neal on the head, fussing over his rumpled collar and generally just reminding Emma entirely too much of a mother hen. She couldn't tell if Neal was really comfortable with what was happening, but he was definitely not comfortable when his actual mother began glaring at his step-mother and seemed to find some fake lint on his shoulder that needed to be removed. It was almost hilarious, but her son was in the middle of what was rapidly becoming a war zone.

“It's been great seeing you, Gold,” she said, scooting out of the booth. “But I've gotta go rescue your son.”

He nodded tersely, not quite paying attention to her but he didn't really need to.

“Hey Neal, Henry,” she said, putting a hand on her son's head and tousling his hair. “You guys wanna go get some ice cream?”

“Oh dear God, yes,” Neal mumbled, practically falling off his stool in the mad scramble to get away from Belle and Milah. Henry (never one for skipping a trip to Any Given Sundae) wasn't too far behind his dad out the door.

She shot a glance back towards Granny's as they walked down the street. Gold had removed Belle from the diner not long after they left.


	8. Father Knows Best

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Neal struggles with parenting.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Gennylovesfandoms prompted:  
> And to your point on Neal suddenly having two moms: him and Henry could be sitting at Granny’s one day and Neal grumbles about having two moms fighting over him and Henry’s all like WELCOME TO MY LIFE DAD, or something

 The woman who ran Any Given Sundae had always given Emma the creeps a little bit, but damn did she know her stuff. Henry had a pretty healthy appetite for everything sold there, and Neal had offered to pay as a thanks for the rescue, so Emma wasn't about to turn it down. She wasn't quite sure she'd have characterized it as a _rescue_ , but then again she had gotten to break up a bar brawl the night before between the same two women, so maybe he had a point. But, whether there would have been bloodshed over her son's dad or not, Emma couldn't help but think it was a little funny.

“It's not funny,” Neal reassured her. “Neither one of them raised me. It's actually pretty weird.”

“My parents didn't raise me either,” Emma reminded him. “Doesn't make them not my parents.”

“Yeah, but it's _two_ moms,” Neal replied. “Do you have any idea how awkward this is?”

Henry made a little snorting sound and Neal looked sheepish.

“Okay, maybe he does,” Neal continued, before turning back to Henry and taking on a defensive tone. “But I am a grown man, okay? I am allowed to think it's weird.”

“At least your moms aren't trying to kill each other,” Henry shot back.

“That remains to be seen,” Neal said with an ironic grin, reaching out and ruffling Henry's hair. “Anyway, didn't anyone ever tell you it's rude to contradict your father?”

Henry screwed his face up and Neal laughed, and Emma could hardly believe how much they looked like each other sometimes. It was really just uncanny sometimes, but especially when they smiled.

“So what's your plan, anyway?” Emma asked him. “Still looking for a place that's not with your dad and Belle?”

“That's the idea, yeah,” he agreed. “There aren't a whole lot of places around, though.”

“Seriously?” Emma replied. “Your dad owns a ton of buildings, why don't you just ask him if there's anything available? Worst case there's probably a warehouse you can convert into a studio or something.”

“I dunno,” Neal said. “I mean, yeah you're right he'd totally let me live someplace, but I miss being useful. Back in New York I had my own place and my own job and I wasn't dependent on anyone. Here I'm being supported. I need to find a job.”

“I could see if my mom knows anyone who's hiring,” Henry offered. “Or, I guess grandma Snow is the mayor now. She might know.”

“Can't hurt,” Emma said with a shrug. “The city is always looking for public servants. The magic attacks tend to do a number on infrastructure.”

“Maybe,” Neal replied. “It's not a bad idea.”

Emma made a mental note to talk to her mother about it later, not that she thought it would make much difference – Mary Margaret wasn't exactly secretive about liking Neal, or at least liking him more than she liked Hook, anyway. Which, if nothing else good came out of Milah coming back, it had gotten Hook to back off. Emma just wished now that maybe she hadn't kissed her son's grandma's boyfriend before that had happened. She was still not really looking forward to that particular lapse in judgment coming out into the open, or the inevitable fallout. This town was really way too fucking small.

 

Neal really did need a job, and badly. He was living off of some savings, but he was rapidly hitting the point where he was going to have to start asking his father for an allowance – not that Rumpelstiltskin wouldn't give him one, but Neal had a kid now – he was the one who was supposed to be doling out allowances, and even if it weren't for Henry he still didn't want to be dependent on his father anymore. He'd been on his own since he wasn't much older than Henry, and after struggling so long to get to a place in his life where he was a functional adult he didn't want to go back to childhood. That really did narrow down his options, though.

Maybe they were right and he should talk to Mary Margaret. Not like _that_ would be an awkward conversation, anyway. _Hey, so I know you're a princess and all and my dad may or may not have cursed you guys – hahaha wacky fun...anyway, I kind of need a job._ Oh yeah. This was going to be the absolute worst. Henry was worth it though, and so was Emma, and that's what he had to remember as he stood outside city hall bracing himself for this conversation.

Mary Margaret was insanely busy, like he'd expected she'd be. He hadn't expected to see one of the dwarfs (Bashful?) running around and taking notes, but he probably should have. Mayors do need assistants, after all.

He stood in the office for a few minutes while Emma's mother dashed around like a crazy person flipping through heavy books and dictating memos to her assistant. He felt awfully out of place and in the way, and was fighting the urge to jump out the nearest window before she could notice him when he felt the full force of her attention turn towards him.

“Neal!” she exclaimed happily, waving off Bashful and grabbing Neal's arm to pull him further into the office. “What brings you here?”

“Just thought I'd stop by,” he said, taking a deep breath before swallowing his pride. “To see if you had any jobs the city needs done.”

“What do you mean?”

Ah hell, she wasn't going to make it easy.

“Well, since I'm going to be here awhile for Henry and everything,” he tried not to fidget too hard as he spoke. “I need to figure out something to do to be useful. I can't just hang out at the diner all day.”

“Oh,” Mary Margaret said slowly, realization dawning on her. “Well, we might be able to figure something out. What did you do before?”

She was digging through a stack of papers on her desk before pulling out a piece of paper that he assumed was probably a list of things the city needed done.

“A little bit of everything,” he admitted. “After I got away from Pan there were some things I'm not proud of. I did go to college, though. And the last couple years I was working as a financial analyst.”

“So you're good at math?” she said suddenly, perking up.

“Uh, yeah, I guess.”

Well, he didn't really want to get into his career as a bookie but yes, math was the one subject he'd really excelled at.

“We need a new math teacher at the middle school,” she said with a wide grin. “The old one didn't come over in the last curse.”

“I don't have a teaching certificate,” he replied slowly, wondering what else she could have on that list. “My degree is in business.”

“Nobody here has a teaching certificate,” she said cheerfully. “Or a medical license, or a library sciences degree, or any non-curse qualifications to speak of. You're almost over qualified.”

He wasn't really sure he liked the sound of this, but beggars couldn't be choosers. Still, though. _Teaching? Middle school students?!_

“Just give it a week,” Mary Margaret continued. “See how you like it.”

“Is it really good to change the teachers on that short notice?”

“Their current teacher is whoever has a free period,” she explained. “Even having the same teacher for a full week would be a step up.”

“Oh, well...I guess you found a new math teacher.”

“That's great!” she said cheerfully. “You have no idea how good that is to hear, it's one less thing for me to take care of.”

“Well, I guess I'll get out of your hair then,” he replied. “Thanks so much.”

“No, really, thank you,” she was only half listening to him, though, already gesturing for Bashful to come back in. “I'll send something to Henry's principal this week to get you oriented.”

“Wait, I'd be teaching Henry?”

“He's in sixth grade now,” she chirped. “That's middle school.”

So hey, the upshot was he had a job and was going to get to spend more time with his kid. The downside was that now he had to grade his child and had to do it as fairly as possible with absolutely no training or anything to prepare him for this.

He also needed to figure out a new primary care physician, because somehow the 'nobody here has a medical license' thing hadn't occurred to him. This town was too damn weird.


	9. Milah's Day Out

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Milah tries to assimilate.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is my first time writing Milah from her own pov, so please let's try to keep in mind whose side of the story we're getting here when evaluating the truth of various statements.
> 
> Also let's all welcome Tinuviel_Undomiel, who will be taking over as co-author starting in the next chapter! Hopefully, that means slightly more frequent updates.

> Anonymous said:
> 
> Milah-verse prompts galore- Milah goes clothes shopping and heartily (pun not intended) approves of bras. What is this strange thing called "democracy?" The previously mentioned "why is no one perturbed by the tv and do the little people inside ever try to escape?" What exactly is a "lesbian" and why does Killian like watching them so much? Milah still has one thing in common with Rumple, once she knows what ice cream is, she'd happily live off it.
> 
> Anonymousnerdgirl prompted:
> 
> Milah!verse: Milah gets a job at The Rabbit Hole.

* * *

 

Somehow, it had fallen to a woman named Snow White to help Milah adjust to life in her new home. Milah was thankful for the help, especially as she’d been having a difficult time understanding most of the odd things she’d been encountering in this world. When she had been growing up, there had been a sharp divide amongst the upper and lower classes. The ogre wars had eased things a bit from her parents’ time, but even so her life had been a series of prescribed steps leading to becoming a wife and mother and a lifetime of hard work and then death. And now, she was wandering through a store with a princess.

“What is this device?” Milah asked, holding up a smattering of straps and fabric for the princess’ perusal.

“It’s called a bra,” the princess said quietly, looking around quickly before she continued. “It’s...a type of corset.”

“With no laces?”

“There are little hooks in the back,” she replied, taking the garment from Milah’s hand and showing her. “And it’s stretchy. They’re really fairly comfortable. Well, they’re not too bad, anyway.”

“Do I need one?”

“You’ll probably want three or four,” Snow White said. “One black, one white, one in nude, and one that’s just for...fun.”

The princess blushed a little bit, and Milah was struck again with the surrealness of the whole thing. She was now discussing seduction. With a princess. She still wasn’t sure why this shopping trip had been arranged, only that Baelfire seemed to think that she needed new clothes and that this was evidently her grandson’s other grandmother. It galled a little bit that she had no friends of her own, and was now depending on these strangers who were also part of her grandson’s extended family. She couldn’t afford to become estranged from them, though. This little bit of charity was all she had going for her -- she wasn’t even sure who was going to pay for all of this, or that she wanted to ask. She’d only been told not to worry about it and that it would help her to assimilate.

“Do you see anything you like?” the princess asked, flipping through clothes on hangers.

“I don’t know,” Milah admitted. “It’s all so different from what I had before.”

“Well, what kind of things did you like to wear before? That might be a good place to start.”

“I never had much choice in the matter,” Milah admitted. “When I was a girl I wore my sister’s old clothes, and as an adult I wore simple things that were practical for working in. When I was a pirate, I wore trousers and things that were easy to move in. And now...I don’t know. I don’t have a job to do here.”

“That does make things more complicated,” the princess said with a contemplative tone to her voice. “Is there anybody around town whose clothes you think look good? Emma or Regina or Ruby?”

Milah thought about that for a moment. She liked some of Emma’s clothes, but the bolder colors and patterns the waitress Ruby wore appealed as well.

“I think I would like trousers again,” Milah finally said. “Trousers and those stretchy short sleeved shirts and a leather jacket. And boots.”

“That is definitely a good place to start,” Snow White said with a smile, moving toward a different rack that was a practical rainbow of the shirts Milah admired.

 

It was another few hours of shopping and getting to know each other before Milah had what looked to be a promising start to a wardrobe. She had a few pairs of ‘blue jeans,’ some boots, a black leather jacket, and several of what she had been told were called ‘tee shirts” in different styles and sleeve lengths. The princess had also insisted that she needed at least two dresses -- one for going someplace nice and one that was for going someplace not so nice. These were both tight, but one was longer with a higher neckline. Milah had never owned something so scandalous in her life and she loved it. The whole thing was so exciting she couldn’t wait to put one on and go out someplace. Not that she had anywhere to go or anyone to go with, particularly. Maybe Killian if she could find him. Still, it had been nice to get to go out with another woman even if it was pity that had motivated it.

“I did want to thank you,” Milah said to Snow as the shop girl was checking them out. “For coming with me and explaining things.”

“No, it was my pleasure,” the princess replied earnestly. “With the baby at home it was nice to be able to get out for a little while.”

“I understand,” Milah said. “I remember when Bae was a baby and Rumple was still away at the war. There were days I was close to wanting to cry from being so lonely in the house.”

“Is that how your life was?” Snow asked, giving Milah a strange look. “I mean, Rumpelstiltskin has never spoken of his life to anyone except maybe Belle, I wouldn’t know.”

“Oh,” Milah hadn’t thought about that. This woman knew Rumpelstiltskin, and she probably also knew Belle. This entire trip had been a favor done for one of them (or possibly Baelfire). “Well, it was a long time ago.”

“I’m sure,” Snow White said with an earnest smile. “But you’re here now, and that’s the important thing.”

Was the princess ever not cheerful? Her energy had scarcely flagged all day, and her enthusiasm had been a lifeline.

Milah’s wondering was interrupted by another shop girl coming in from the back and setting a box on the counter.

“After you’re done there,” the new girl said to the cashier. “I need you to call Mrs. Gold and tell her that her special order came in.”

The cashier nodded, returning to running a little wand with a red light over the tags on the clothes. The reminder of Rumple’s new wife served to sour some of Milah’s good mood, although her curiosity was getting the better of her as well. The box was open and sitting right there. She only had to figure out a way to see it. What did Rumple’s princess need to buy? Didn’t she have enough clothes already?

She was lucky. The cashier and Snow White had to discuss payment (Milah still wasn’t sure who was paying for all this and she wasn’t sure she really wanted to ask) which distracted both of them enough for her to sneak a peek into the box. It was filled with silky, lacy things -- bras and panties and little nightgowns. They all looked so soft and pretty and delicate, and Milah recognized them as things that were meant to be taken off. She hated the little surge of jealousy that went through her at the sight of them, but she hated Rumple and Belle more. She’d never owned such nice things, and even if she had some now she wasn’t sure she had anyone to take them off with.

Milah didn’t still love Rumplestiltskin, and she certainly didn’t still want him. But he had been her husband, and Belle was her replacement. He wasn’t supposed to be happy after she had left. She hadn’t thought of him for years except insomuch that he was Bae’s father and if she wanted to see her son again she would have to face him. It had never occurred to her that when they reunited, he would be wealthy and happily married and she would be poor and friendless. He had done better for himself, and she had not, and it was hard not to be jealous of that.

She turned her attention away from the box just in time to not be caught spying, and walked back to her hotel with the princess and thanked her one last time for taking her out before returning to her room and changing into one of her new outfits. Milah was adjusting to her new life as well as could be expected. She had figured out the magic wand that controlled the little people in the television box in her room and she had stopped stepping out into the street without checking first for the odd metal carriages. But if this was really going to be her new home, she needed to find something to do. She was currently living off of charity -- she wasn’t sure precisely whose but she suspected it was a combination of her son, the inn keeper, and whatever Baelfire had managed to force his father into sparing for her. She couldn’t let this continue, she had to learn to support herself.

Unfortunately, Milah didn’t have much in the way of skills that would be useful here. She had been an accomplished seamstress, but the clothes here came from stores and from what she could tell nobody constructed them. She had never been a particularly good cook, and to her eternal shame she hadn’t spent that much time with her son when he had been a boy. She had been a fairly good pirate, but there was no ship here and no crew. She did know how to fence, though, so perhaps lessons were an option she could explore.

She was, of course, going about this all wrong. The question wasn’t what she was qualified for so much as it was what was available. She was kicking herself for not asking Snow White if she knew of anything that needed to be done, but it was a bit too late now. The waitress, perhaps, would have idea. There must be some way she could be useful here.

The diner was overcrowded when Milah made her way down, though, and the waitress was busy. She made a mental note to ask about waitressing for her room and board before slipping out the door. She had never truly blended in with the rest of town before, and it was so exciting to be able to walk the streets like anyone else would. She passed some kind of athletic center, and peeked in the windows. There was a group of men practicing fencing while another one looked on (well, there went that idea). There were also a few people running in place and others who were lifting heavy things. Another man who seemed to be in charge was standing near a woman as she lay down and repeatedly raised a bar into the air. He seemed to be instructing her, and Milah watched for a little while in fascination. He perhaps wasn’t as handsome as Killian, but she was fascinated with the way his muscles were moving through the thin material of his shirts. She had very rarely seen people perform this sort of activity, and never had a chance to actively watch someone’s muscles. It was provoking a strange desire reaction that she hadn’t anticipated.

She felt a little guilty for this betrayal of her lover -- or was it really a betrayal? Were they together anymore? He seemed to have moved on from her in the time she had been supposed to be dead. These thoughts were too morose for the best day she’d yet had in Storybrooke, and so instead she turned from the window she had been lurking at and made her way down the street to the Rabbit Hole. The tavern had been the one place she truly felt at home since her arrival in town, reminding her of good times spent with her crewmates in the bars back home. It was going to be fun to be dressed like the other women for once.

The usual assortment of people were scattered throughout the bar lost in their own thoughts. It was no matter, Milah would have a few drinks and return to her room to consider her options.

“No, uh-uh, no way,” the bartender said to her as soon as she sat down. “You still owe me for your drinks the other night and last time you were here I had to call the sheriff.”

Milah bristled, but she knew he was right. Still, though, he couldn’t cut her off. This was the last place she felt comfortable.

“I’m looking for a job,” she replied sadly. “Can’t you just extend my tab a little while? I’ll pay you as soon as I have some money I promise.”

“I can’t extend a tab,” he said sympathetically. “Your son paid off the last one for you. You’re not good for it.”

Milah flinched at this news. She had known Bae was covering some of her expenses, but this one seemed like the last straw. Her good day had officially been ruined, and she burst into tears there at the bar.

“I’m sorry,” she sobbed. “I just don’t know what to do because I didn’t come here with curse and I just don’t know how anything works or where I can go to work and my son hates me and my husband hates me and my boyfriend is gone and I don’t have any friends and this is the only place I’ve felt at home since I arrived.”

“Look,” the bartender continued, visibly uncomfortable with her current outburst. “You say you’re looking for a job. I need a waitress and someone who can cover a couple nights a week so I can take some time off -- my last bartender vanished after the last curse hit. It’s not much, but you’d get to keep all your tips.”

She was a little ashamed of how quickly her tears dried up at his offer. Barwork. She could do barwork. She knew how to mix drinks, and she could learn how the money here worked. Barmaids in the old world were largely responsible for bringing ale and deflecting men whose flirting got too rowdy, and Milah was fairly certain she could handle those things at least.

“Do you mean it?” she whimpered, clinging to tears for fear of him rescinding his offer without the discomfort of her sobs. “I can really work here?”

“Yeah, why not?” he replied. “Pretty girl like you? It’d probably be good for business.”

She stifled another whimper and thought about how nice it would have been to hug him -- he was the first person to compliment her since she had fallen out of the portal.

 


	10. Fathers and Sons

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Miner's Day only comes once a year.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> anonymousnerdgirl said:  
> Milah!verse: Neal thanks Rumple for the good parts of his childhood.

Fatherhood agreed with Neal. He still wasn’t sure what exactly Miner’s Day was, or why there was a fair to celebrate it, but Henry had the day off from school and Emma had agreed to go with them so he wasn’t going be too critical about it. He’d go along with this if it killed him.

“So what’s first on the agenda?” Neal asked, having no idea at all what the traditions around this were at all. “Fried food? Ferris wheel? Carnival games?”

“We have to buy candles from the nuns,” Henry replied. “It’s tradition.”

This town was so weird sometimes it hurt.

“Then what?”

“Then we play games,” Henry said with a smirk. “And I wouldn’t say no to a funnel cake.”

“That’s my boy,” Neal said, ruffling his son’s hair and looking over at Emma.

Emma was rolling her eyes at the two of them fondly. They’d agreed to take things slow, and Neal could go slow. He could go glacially slow if that’s what had to happen, he owed her at least that much, after the way he’d screwed everything up so bad before, anyway.

With all the craziness with his parents (and their lovers) lately, it was pretty nice to be in a crowd of people that wasn’t watching his family have a complete meltdown. He briefly wondered where his parents actually were, but he decided not to let his thoughts linger too long. His father and Belle were probably around someplace, and his mother had recently gotten a new job so with any luck she was there or else trying to make some new friends. He’d have wondered where Regina had gone off to, since Henry was currently short a mother and all, except he’d seen her earlier necking in an alley with Robin Hood and promptly steered everyone away from that little show. It didn’t make a bit of difference to Neal how Regina spent her time, but he figured he still owed Robin one so he wouldn’t bring the whole Swan-Mills-Cassidy family situation down on the guy just yet. Let him get eased into it before they sprung that particular trap, it’d be funnier that way.

“Hey Dad?” Henry asked as he shoved pieces of fried dough into his mouth. “Can I ask you a question about the Enchanted Forest?”

The kid sure didn’t like to warm up to a question, did he?

“Sure kid,” he replied, stealing a piece of Henry’s funnel cake. “What’s up?”

“Did you ever see an ogre?”

“Not up close,” he replied. “The Ogre Wars were going pretty heavy by the time I was a teenager and depending on how close the fighting was sometimes a few of the older boys would climb trees and watch the battles. I almost had to go, but your grandpa...I ended up not having to join the war after all.”

Henry looked like it was on the tip of his tongue to probe for more information, but Emma swooped in with the save.

“I have,” she interrupted. “When I went through the portal with your grandma Snow we got attacked by one. She put an arrow through its eye.”

“Why didn’t you tell me before?” Henry exclaimed, sounding completely scandalized at not having been allowed to know this before.

“I kinda lost track of it in all the commotion afterward,” Emma replied with a shrug. “I was a little distracted by your…other other grandma trying to kill us all.”

From there, the conversation turned towards what other things Emma had clearly been hiding from her only child and how dare she call herself his mother. Neal couldn’t help being relieved at having had the heat taken off of him on that one. There were a lot of things he was willing to discuss with his son, but the time period where his father had taken on the curse and become the Dark One was still something he didn’t like talking about. He didn’t like thinking about it, truth be told. He’d lived a lot of years, and being Rumpelstiltskin’s son had never been particularly easy when they were poor, but at least it had been comfortable. They may not have had much in the way of food, but he’d always been loved and cared for, he’d always felt safe. Of course, he knew now that his safety had been an illusion crafted by his father, but as a child all he’d really known was that he could go to his Papa and if it was within his father’s power to fix it, it would be fixed. With the Dark One, he’d lost all sense of that safety.

It was strange to be thinking about all this so freely now. The truth of his childhood had been something he’d kept hidden his entire adult life. If you turned up in Manhattan and started explaining to people how you were the son of Rumpelstiltskin and came from a village that was overrun by ogres before spending a few hundred years running from Lost Boys in Neverland you’d find yourself in a mental institution before you even got to the bit about how your son’s grandparents were Snow White and Prince Charming and he was raised by the Evil Queen who apparently had something going on with Robin Hood.

Even if talking about it wouldn’t have been such a disastrously bad idea in the rest of his life, Neal didn’t really _like_ thinking about it. He’d only ever wanted to forget where he’d been from and he’d spent his entire life running from it in the pursuit of that goal. To be in Storybrooke now with Henry who desperately wanted to know about magic and ogres and everything he had spent several lifetimes trying to forget was a little bit unnerving sometimes. He didn’t really think either Henry or Emma would really understand if he’d tried to explain. Emma knew about running, at least. She’d been doing it when he met her and he wasn’t sure if she’d ever stopped since. Emma had always been running towards something, though. Deep down, she’d always been the little girl who was looking for someone to love her. Neal hadn’t had that luxury, though. He’d always been running away from a father who had become a stranger and the memory of the one person he’d trusted more than anything letting him go.

“Dad?” Henry asked, and Neal was grateful for the interruption to his troubled thoughts.

“Yeah?” he replied, hoping his voice wasn’t quite as strained as it felt.

“Do you think grandpa Gold would teach me magic?”

“Probably,” Neal admitted. He may hate the sight of magic, but he was pretty sure his father would be thrilled to death to have an excuse to prove to everyone that he wanted to be involved in this family. “Why don’t you ask your other mom, though?”

“The Evil Queen learned from Rumpelstiltskin,” Henry replied sagely. “If you want to be good at something, you should learn from the best.”

“I can’t argue with your logic,” Neal admitted, looking to Emma who gave him a little shrug of acquiescence.

“Anyway,” Henry continued. “She’s already teaching mom.”

He was going to have to accept this, he decided. Emma was apparently the savior who had True Love magic or something, Regina was a powerful sorceress, and his father was the Dark One. Whether Neal liked magic or not, Henry had it in his blood and had practically been raised to it. Neal didn’t have to like it, but he was pretty sure he was going to have to learn to accept it.

“We can ask him,” Neal said finally. “But both your moms have to agree and I want to be there to make sure you don’t learn anything you shouldn’t.”

“Okay,” Henry said with a shrug. “That sounds like fun. We could spend more time together.”

That actually did sound pretty good, actually. Time with Henry was very valuable, and now that Neal had homework he had to grade he was pretty sure he could do at least some of that while he was there. He was just going to have to get past that lingering distrust of his father where magic was concerned is all. No big.

“So we bought our candle and we got funnel cake,” Neal said after they’d spent some time walking and talking. “What do you guys wanna do now?”

“There are games,” Emma said with a little challenge to her voice. “You know, a shooting gallery, balloons you pop with darts, ring toss…”

She was giving him a smile he’d always really liked, a smile that was daring him to challenge her because she knew she’d beat him. He was going to rise to the bait, though, because he always did. He was in too deep to get out now, anyway.

Neal had spent a couple years working at a carnival when he finally escaped Neverland. For a boy who was used to being on the run who had no work papers and no idea what the hell was going on, it had been a pretty good fit. The transient nature of the job had suited him just fine at the time. He spent whatever downtime he had trying to figure out this new world he’d been dropped into, and the adults around him were willing to look the other way when he turned to things like pickpocketing and petty theft to earn a little extra cash for a fake ID. He’d quit the carnival when new management came in and wanted to crack down on the undocumented workers. He didn’t need anyone looking too hard at where he’d come from, so he’d just stayed in some random small town in the Midwest and worked his way around the country. He knew all the tricks you could use to rig these kinds of games, and had every intention of using that knowledge here.

He had not, however, been prepared for the games to not be rigged at all. It should not be that hard to win an unrigged game of ring toss, but after forty-five minutes of trying to win Henry a giant stuffed dog he was willing to admit he may not have been as good at this as he remembered being.

“You know,” Emma teased. “At this point it might be cheaper to just buy him an actual dog.”

“Yeah, Regina’d love that,” Neal replied, tossing another ring that just bounced off the freaking bottle instead of landing on top of it like it _definitely should have_. “I can just imagine a big yellow Labrador leaving hair all over her nice pantsuits and drooling on the tile.”

Emma laughed, and Henry shot his dad a smile.

“I think she’d let me have it,” Henry said. “As long as it stayed at mom’s place.”

“You mean the apartment your mom shares with your grandparents and uncle?” Neal replied. “Yeah, that’ll be a great place to add a dog. Run that by your grandparents and let me know how that goes.”

“You know,” Emma said as he slapped another five-dollar bill on the counter. “You do have your own place now.”

“You mean my one bedroom apartment by the cannery?” he said, missing the bottle _yet again_. “There’s not really room for a pet there.”

She shrugged, and he felt like he may have missed something pretty big except Henry was distracted now.

“Look!” the boy exclaimed, waving towards the Ferris wheel. “It’s grandma and grandpa.”

Neal followed Henry’s gaze, expecting to see Snow and David but instead he saw his father and Belle.

“You know Belle hates when you call her grandma,” Emma said.

“Yeah, but Grandpa Gold thinks it’s funny,” Henry admitted. “Otherwise I’d have stopped.”

Emma shot Neal a look that he was pretty sure meant _that’s your kid_ and Neal had to admit that this one was probably his fault, as he’d been known to (privately) tease Belle about being his mom before everything got so…weird. He should probably talk to Henry about finding a new thing for him to call his grandpa’s wife at some point, though. For one thing, it would really piss off Henry’s actual grandmother if she heard it and that was a hornet’s nest nobody really needed to kick.

“Do they not realize we can all see them?” Emma leaned in and asked.

Neal glanced back to the Ferris wheel and had just enough time to take in that his father was in the process of rounding second base with Belle when Emma clapped her hands over Henry’s eyes and steered him the other way.

“So who wants ice cream?” Neal practically shouted, taking the first midsized stuffed animal the dwarf manning the ring toss booth could hand to him as they made their way far, far away from the show his father and step-mother were putting on for the assembled. He really, really hoped his mother was working. Or at least that she wasn’t at this festival.

  
  


Neal’s shouted offer of ice cream turned into burgers and fries at Granny’s. It was the only place they could all be sure they were safe from seeing anything that was best kept under clothes. It also provided them a pretty nice chance to warm up, and Neal had always been partial to diner food.

“So what did you eat in the Enchanted Forest?” Henry asked innocently between bites of fries.

“Well,” Neal said after thinking for a little while. “We didn’t have a lot of money. So it was a lot of stews and bread, mostly. Sometimes we’d have meat pies if we had a little extra.”

There had been more before his mother left. Not a lot more, but a little. And things had also gotten better when Neal had gotten old enough to help. It hadn’t occurred to him until just now really that after his mother had left, his father had done all the working and all the cooking. Whatever little bit of money they had usually went to purchase food that was already prepared or that could be prepared reasonably quickly. His father hadn’t ever made much of a fuss about it, and Neal hadn’t really realized that his father must have been working himself to the bone to make sure they were both fed and clothed that whole time.

“So no giant turkey legs?” Henry almost sounded disappointed by that revelation.

“Your grandparents would know about that more than me,” Neal admitted, feeling every inch the peasant boy he was as he said that. “We had a lot of lamb and chicken. Sometimes there was pork or beef if it was market season, but we were farmers for the most part and your grandpa couldn’t hunt.”

They really had been limited by a lot of things. If Rumpelstiltskin didn’t need a walking stick and had ever learned to clean game, they could have supplemented their meagre table with hunting. Neal was just barely becoming old enough to help support them when the draft age was lowered and he would have been taken away.

Neal didn’t harbor the same bitterness for his mother that he had his father, because he’d spent the better part of three centuries nurturing this festering hurt against his father whereas his mother had always been the woman who had been taken by pirates, but in that moment it was hard not to hate her for leaving them. They’d been completely helpless without her.

It occurred to Neal then that he’d never really felt helpless. Even when the soldiers were supposed to be coming for him, his father had always had a plan. There had always been safety in his home, and until he was the father it hadn’t even occurred to him that maybe his father had only been brave for him because he’d had to be.

What could he even do with that knowledge, now that he had it?

 

“I don’t know why you even want to attend this ridiculous event?” Rumpelstiltskin grumbled as his wife took his arm on their way out the door.

Belle smiled sweetly at him. “Because it’s good fun. I hear there is even a Ferris wheel this year. I read about one of those and I would love to try it out.”

And that was enough to let her drag him to this insufferable fair, she wanted to go and he could deny her nothing. Belle had never gotten the chance to go to Miner’s Day before. Of course Mr. Gold had never attended due to his reputation, so this would be a first for the both of them.

Right away, Belle was in love with the place, just the look on her face said that. For Rumple it was a kaleidoscope of noise, irritating lots, and questionable food. Everyone in Storybrooke had turned out for all of the excitement. It was impossible to stand in one section of the square and not bump into someone.

“Oh! Cotton candy!” Belle pointed to one of the dwarves who had a cart set up full of the fluffy pink sweet.

“You sound like Henry, darling,” he said.

“Come on, we can share one,” she insisted. He sighed, but let her drag him to cart. He paid his two dollars and let Belle take her first bite of the teeth-rotting treat. She shut her eyes and let out a moan of delight, a face that gave him positively lewd thoughts.

“You’ve got to try this,” she said, taking of a tuft and holding it out for him. He smiled and opened his mouth. She set the cotton candy on his tongue while he closed his lips around her fingers, licking at them as they slipped from his mouth.

“Delicious,” he admitted, “but not half as much as you.”

Her cheeks pinked and she smiled at him before leaning up to give him a sweet kiss. Her lips tasted just like the cotton candy and he couldn’t help but swipe his tongue on her bottom lip.

Belle giggled and gently pushed him away. “People are staring.”

He didn’t care. Let them stare. Perhaps none of them could imagine what Belle could see in him, neither could he half the time, but they were both happy and that was all that mattered.

They finished off their cotton candy as they wandered through the mirror maze. It was a rather bizarre sight seeing oneself in a dozens of mirrors. Belle found the whole thing delightful, but Rumple had never been too fond of mirrors himself.

“We should find Neal and Henry,” Belle said, “They’d enjoy that.”

“They’re around with Emma I’m sure,” he said. Milah might also be with him and he wasn’t looking forward to finding his ex-wife at the moment. It was still strange to think that his first wife was alive and running around _his_ town.

“Let’s try the Ferris wheel next,” Belle said, taking his hand to gently pull him along. He’d follow her anywhere, of course, even to a ride with questionable construction.

It wasn’t as large as the Ferris wheels he’d seen on the television, but it was a decent sized one for Storybrooke. Belle didn’t care that it wasn’t as glorious as the London Eye, for her it was as magnificent as the Eiffel Tower. She pulled him into one of the empty seats. Leroy was the one running the whole thing so he strapped them in and started the wheel.

Belle put a hand on his knee and squeezed it as the wheel began to bring them up, up, up, over the town of Storybrooke. “Oh, it’s beautiful,” she said.

“Yes,” he said, looking only at her, “It is a wonderful view.”

She squeezed his knee again before leaning into his chest. Yes, the nicest part about the Ferris wheel was how cramped the seats were. He wrapped his arm around his wife and pulled her even closer. Belle smiled at him and gave him a kiss. “Thank you for taking me, Rumple.”

“You know I can never say no to you, my love,” he said.

“You’re far too good to me,” she said.

“Only because I don’t deserve you.”

Belle reached up and put one finger to his lips. “None of that now. Let’s just enjoy ourselves. You make me so happy, Rumple, and that’s all that matters.”

She kissed him again, but this time he didn’t let her pull away. He held her tightly to him, savoring every inch of her mouth and burying his fingers into her hair. He loved her so much and he often wondered how a perfect woman like her could possibly love him, but she did. He knew they were in a public place and quite literally on top of the town so everyone could see them, but he didn’t care. He made her happy and Belle was right, that was all that mattered.

She pressed hot little kisses to his jaw and neck while his hand traveled down her shoulder to her breast. He could already feel himself hardening in his trousers. Would it be wrong if he were to simply pull up her skirts and…well no, this was hardly the place with children all around them. Maybe he could just magic them back home then.

Unfortunately, the ride ended before he could talk Belle into the idea of whisking them both to bed. She did give him one last kiss before they departed his now favorite ride in the whole fair.

“I’m hungry, let’s go to Granny’s,” she said.

“How about we go home?” he said, “I can think of other things we can do there.”

Belle smiled at him. “After Granny’s. Besides, we haven’t found Henry or Neal yet. We really should see them before we leave.”

He couldn’t disagree with that, even if he was eager to get home and spend the rest of the night in bed with his beloved wife. They pushed into Granny’s to find that many people in town were enjoying their dinner there as well. He looked around for an empty table, only to smile when his eyes found the corner booth. “Well, look who is here.”

“Hello,” Belle said once they reached Neal, Emma and Henry. “We’ve been wondering if we would see all of you.”

“Well, we saw you,” Emma said, giving them a sly grin, “You guys have fun on the Ferris wheel?”

It took less than a second for her words to sink in. Belle’s cheeks bloomed with pink while Gold have her a thousand yard stare. It worked to intimidate most people, but Emma was always immune to his tricks.

“Are you going to sit with us, Grandpa?” Henry asked.

“Of course we will if your parents don’t mind.”

“Not at all,” Neal said, both he and Emma moving over so they could sit down. “We were about to order dessert.”

“Oh, you guys have already eaten?” Rumple asked them.

“Yeah, but I’m glad we ran into you,” Neal said, “Actually, can I talk with you outside, Papa?”

“Of course,” he replied, giving Belle a puzzled look before he left the booth. He tried to think about what he could have done to displease his son. Perhaps making out with Belle on the Ferris wheel was embarrassing, but it wasn’t the worst thing they’d ever done.

They walked out of the diner, stopping just out the door. “Is something wrong, son?” he asked.

“No, I…I’ve just been thinking about some things,” Neal said, “You know with mom back, it’s just gotten me thinking about the old days. You remember them.”

“I can never forget,” Rumplestiltskin replied. The hard days of being a cowardly, poor spinner, with nothing but his darling boy. They weren’t bad days, but they could have been happier. Of course the best moments were when it was just the two of them, snuggling under thin blankets and pretending that one day they would have all they needed. He did miss the closeness they used to share then. Of course all of that was his fault.

“Well Henry was asking some things and it got me thinking about when mom left and…well I never realized how much you did for me back then. You kept me safe, you protected me. You were there for me when mom wasn’t and I never really thanked you for that.”

Rumple was at a loss for words. What could he possibly say to all of that? He had done so much wrong with his son, but Neal was telling him not all of it was bad. Was he right? Was he perhaps not so terrible of a father?

“You don’t need to thank me,” he said, trying to blink away tears, “I’m your father, Bae, it’s what I wanted to do.”

“I know that. And I know it doesn’t change everything that happened after, I’m still dealing with all of that, but I wanted you to know that I do appreciate all of the good you did do for me.”

Rumple smiled and put his hand on Neal’s shoulder. “I’m glad, and I do want to make up for all of the things that I did wrong. I hope you know that.”

“I do,” Neal said, reaching up to cover his father’s hand with his own.

They stood there for several moments, just being father and son again. It was all Rumple had wanted for over three hundred years, just to be with his son again. Of course, things were different now. That was apparent when Emma opened the door and said, “Hey, the ice cream is melting. You two better get in here before it’s gone.”

“All right, we’re coming,” Neal promised. He opened the door to let his father in first and the followed them both inside.

Belle had apparently ordered them some apple pie a la mode. She smiled up at him when they returned. “Everything all right?”

“Everything is perfect,” he told her, kissing her cheek as he sat beside her.

Belle took a forkful of pie and ice cream and held it up for him. “Would you like some pie?”

“Seriously, haven’t you two been disgusting enough for one day?” Emma asked.

He grinned at her while Belle fed him the bite of pie. Emma shot him a look before returning to her sundae, muttering something about how Henry’s book got his reputation all wrong.

For the first time in a long time, Rumpelstiltskin was exactly where he wanted to be.

 

**Author's Note:**

> To be continued.


End file.
